The Valentine Bride. Liz Fielding
Harcourt in her life.’ As she poured the tea the blaze of diamonds on her left hand caught the lights. ‘He really cares about me. Keeps me on the straight and narrow with my diet—I’m a diabetic, did you know?’ she said, pulling a face.
‘Jodie told me.’
‘You’ll need to keep an eye on your own health. It’s hereditary.’
‘I’ll take care.’ Then, ‘Tell me about your honeymoon trip. You went on a cruise?’
‘It was heaven…’ Once she was off, the conversation never lagged.
They talked about Jodie, Australia, Louise’s business. About everything but the Valentine family. It was like talking to someone she’d known all her life. But eventually the conversation came back around to her.
‘I have my Derek and Jodie has her Heath. What about you, sweetie?’ Patsy asked. ‘They say everything happens in threes. Is there anyone special in your life?’
In that split second before she spoke, Louise remembered the way that Max had looked at her. The way she’d felt…
‘No,’ she said, quickly, but even as the word left her mouth a little voice was saying, No problem. No impediment. Nothing to stop you…
Her mother raised one perfectly groomed brow and Louise distracted her with tales about old boyfriends. The ones she might have married if they’d asked.
‘Just as well they didn’t ask,’ she said, laughing. ‘It would have been a total disaster.’
She didn’t tell her about the one she’d convinced herself was everything she was looking for in a husband: the one who’d told her to stop fooling herself before he’d walked away.
‘I hate to say goodbye,’ Patsy said as, finally, they walked towards the lift. Then, when she didn’t immediately respond, ‘You do want to see me again?’
Louise, momentarily distracted by the back view of Max, apparently absorbed in a painting, said, ‘Yes, yes, of course I do.’
He’d come.
He’d actually turned up, had waited in case she needed him.
‘I, um, want to meet Derek, too.’
The lift arrived and Patsy stepped in, holding the door. Louise forced herself not to glance back and stepped in beside her, arranged dinner for the next week, then hugged her mother goodbye on the pavement before seeing her into a taxi.
‘You’re sure I can’t give you a lift?’ she asked, from the back of the cab.
‘No. I’m fine. I’ll give you a call about next week.’
She waited, waved as she drove off. Then turned and walked back into the gallery, took the lift back up to the top floor.
When the doors opened, she saw that Max had not moved and she didn’t know whether she was irritated by his certainty that she’d come back, or warmed by the fact that he’d waited for her. There were no clear cut lines with him.
‘I thought it was best to stay put,’ he said, as she held the door and he stopped pretending, joined her in the lift, ‘or we might have been chasing one another around the houses for the next ten minutes.’
‘Only if I came back,’ she pointed out, trying not to smile, but without much success.
‘True.’ He seemed to be finding it easy enough to keep a straight face. Then, ‘You’re very like her.’
‘Yes. It’s strange. All my life people have been telling me I’m like my…Like Ivy Valentine…’
‘She’s still your mother, Lou. She was the one who raised you. And you are like her. Okay, some of it’s superficial, chance. Your colouring, height. But it’s not just that. You hold your head the way she does, you use the same gestures. You have her class.’
‘You don’t think Patsy has class?’
‘Patsy?’
‘It’s a bit late in the day to start calling her Mum, don’t you think?’ She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. ‘She asked me to call her that.’
‘It suits her,’ he said, taking her arm as they headed for the door.
She stiffened momentarily, then forced herself to relax. If she pulled away, he’d think that what he said, did, mattered to her.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, once they were outside, but keeping her voice light.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘She’s classy.’
‘Not quite the same thing.’
‘What can I say? She’s a real head-turner, Lou.’ Then, with a wry grin, ‘Don’t let her near my father. He has a fatal weakness for that chorus-girl-fallen-on-good-times look.’
‘Your father has a fatal weakness for women full-stop.’
‘Life has never been dull,’ he agreed, and it was Louise who found herself reaching out to him, tucking her arm through his as they walked away from the square. ‘I don’t think you understand how lucky you’ve been. How much I envied you the sheer ordinariness of your family.’
‘Ordinariness?’
‘It’s what boys yearn for. Parents who don’t attract attention.’
‘Oh, dear. Bad luck,’ she said, laughing. ‘How is Aunt Georgina? Where is she?’
‘In Mexico, painting up a storm. Apparently the light is magical. She’s living with someone called Jose who’s half her age.’ He looked at her. ‘Ring Ivy, Louise. Don’t abandon something precious to chase rainbows.’
She shook her head. Unwilling to admit that he was right. But Max had been no more than a toddler when his parents had split up. Since then there had been a succession of stepmothers, half-siblings, step-siblings from his father. Drama and lovers from his mother. No one, she thought, had ever put Max first. It was scarcely any wonder that he had given all his heart, his loyalty to the business. Bella Lucia had never hurt him.
She looked up, but not far; in her high heels her eyes were nearly on a level with his.
‘I will call her,’ she promised.
‘When?’
‘Soon.’ Then, because all that hurt too much to think about, ‘Chorus girl fallen on good times?’
‘The glamour, the clothes, the diamonds in those rings…’
‘So what you’re saying is that she’s a classy “broad” rather than a product of the finishing school, debutante system? Now I’m afraid to ask what I owe to nature as opposed to nurture.’
It was the height of the rush-hour and Max, sensing approaching quicksand, used the excuse of looking around for a cruising cab to avoid her direct gaze.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘I thought you didn’t want to know.’
‘Oh, please…’
‘It’s not something I could put into words,’ he said.
How could you possibly quantify the smoke and mirrors of sex appeal? Pin it down, list the components. Item: hair, the colour of ripe wheat rippling in the wind. Item: two eyes, blue-grey, unless she was angry, when they were like storm clouds threaded with lightning. Item: one mouth…
He found himself staring at her mouth. Parted slightly, as if she were on the point of saying something outrageous. On the point of laughing. Dark, rich, enticing. The colour of the small sweet plums he picked in his Italian grandmother’s family home on rare and treasured holidays, when he’d been taken along to keep his half-brother Jack from getting into mischief. To give his father time to spend with wife number three…
‘Do